When The Fashion Designers Take Over Home Decor

Forget the walk-in closet. Think live-in closet today. Interior decorating has come a long way from just providing shelter, protection and creature comfort. Now home decor has the power to provide an emotional outlet for self-expression and bolster our ever-frail human egos.

Granted, this may be an awful lot to ask of our slipcovers. But be that as it may, modern ''environmental issues'' have changed.

Naturally, you cannot appear to live well without a life ''style.'' And to develop one, you must be enveloped, couched, in the trappings of image. And you know what that means, don't you? Of course, you do. That means fashion. And, natch, fashion designers.

Designers have long licensed home items such as sheets, towels, bedspreads and even toilet paper. But the strengthened stitch between home decor and fashion is attracting several Seventh Avenue Johnny Come Lovelies. Avant-garb designer Norma Kamali just emptied her Greenwich Village clothing store. She's transforming her space into a surrealistic Gothic home boutique due to open in September.

Punky seamster Stephen Sprouse colored his New York boutique world in shiny silver, beatnik black and hot day-glo hues. He just introduced a new line of skull, safety pin and crystal accessories for his sequined squiggle print sheaths. Can a graffiti and fluorescent line of Sprouse for the House be far behind?

Ralph (''I've always wanted to be sheriff'') Lauren has broadened his ''to the manor-worn'' home scope with an immense Manhattan boutique that's authentic right down to the trust fund trappings. Brass beds, luxe leather chairs, antique books and trinket heirlooms. Lauren even has a gallery of oil paintings -- ''ancestral portraits'' of complete strangers. Perfect for those who long for the look of lineage.

And do not doubt for a split nano-second that the Prince of Poufs, French designer Christian Lacroix, soon will launch an attack on our home fronts. Expect the court of the Crinoline King to be a real froufrou for all: crinolined lamps, bubble bedspreads, flowerpot vases, Spanish scrollwork and bullfighter fringes everywhere.

If all this sounds unlikely, flip through the recently revamped House and Garden. Now slickly dubbed HG, the new rag-Maytag mag is sniffingly referred to within the industry as Home and Garment. There's no denying that the previously staid ''shelter'' magazine now resembles a stylish Mixmaster blend of Vanity Fair and Vogue.

HG's recently departed editor in chief, Anna Wintour, made a stylish, if quick, impression. She was named editor of American Vogue, replacing Grace Mirabella, who reportedly retired in a snit after hearing the industry-wide whispers of Wintour's imminent hiring.

Wintour's HG fashion-at-home philosophy continues. Expect more issues like the one in May, devoted to Tahiti and stylishly illustrated via a moist and salty nubian model sprawled on a Gauguin print rug, a hang 10 surfboard chair propped under a native thatched hut and an airborne cottony hemp Azzedine Alaia dress.

Wintour makes no apologies for the change of clothes. Or philosophy. Nor does she dispel the rumor that the island issue was ''inspired'' when she spotted Alaia's grass-fringed minidress during Milan fashion shows last year. ''We are trying to show the connection between fashion and style and design and decorating,'' Wintour said simply.

But even if you aren't an HG reader, you would have to reside under a rock pile to miss today's fashion bombardments. After Saturday morning cartoons, CNN's Elsa Klensch will sneak you onto the Paris runways, then inside a famous designer's boudoir.

So where did the trend start? And where does it stop?

''It's really become a round robin today,'' says Al Alschuler, a writer at Florida Home and Garden magazine. ''Clothing styles influence home styles, and vice versa.''

The year's Southwest interior decor trend crossed over quickly to the clothing racks. Before you could say buenos dias, stone-washed denim blues, orange and coral-washed silks with silver and turquoise jewelry had turned up in Elle, a slick young fashion magazine.

One rationale for The Way The West Was Worn trend: the recent uncertain political and economic situation in Europe. ''People stopped going to Europe and began traveling in this country,'' says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, a national color trend trade group. ''Many people went to Sante Fe and Albuquerque for the first time. They saw not only the native textiles, rugs and art galleries, but craftspeople working in the same colors, patterns and wovens. The marriage just happened.''